How Microsoft is wooing college kids to write apps for Windows 8

Bloomberg has an interesting story about Microsoft’s efforts to simultaneously woo younger workers and to get more apps into its Windows Store. Microsoft is doing so by recruiting college student interns to write Windows 8 apps.

According to Bloomberg:

To gain share in tablets, a market expected by DisplaySearch to reach $66.4 billion in 2012, Microsoft needs enough apps to challenge the more than 200,000 available for Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad.

As of Tuesday, according to a non-official tally, there were 1851 apps available in the Windows Store, according to the website WinAppUpdate. WinAppUpdate is an independent project created by Wes Miller, an analyst at Kirkland-based research firm Directions on Microsoft. It is unaffiliated with Microsoft.

Microsoft needs to get apps into its Windows Store because older Windows apps won’t work on Windows RT tablets, the tablets Microsoft will be releasing this fall that run on ARM-based processors. (Older Windows apps will still run on Windows 8 tablets running on Intel-based chips.)

You can read more of the Bloomberg story — including details of the apps built by the interns — here.

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Welcome to Microsoft Pri0: That's Microspeak for top priority, and that's the news and observations you'll find here from Seattle Times technology reporter Matt Day. Send tips or comments to mday@seattletimes.com.